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UNDINE AND OUR SYLVAN WORLD 




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CX)PYRIGHT, 1906, BY 
DANIEL EDWARDS KENNEDY 



LISaARY c; CONGRf.SS 
I Two Con-f? RecfiveO 

I JUN 8 \90e 



One hundred copies printed 



"0 

7 

K 





PAGE 

UNDINE 1 

OUR SYLVAN WORLD 19 

THE REAL IRISH SHAMROCK ... 31 

THOREAU IN OLD DUNSTABLE . . 41 

A BROOK AND ITS FLOWERS ... 51 

JULIUS 65 

THE GARDEN 73 

A SUMMER PATH TO A RIVER . . 83 

GRAVEYARD GOSSIP 97 

"FOXY" 107 

ANTIQUES AND ANTIQUARIES . . 115 

THEGOONACK 127 

A DAY IN THE LIBRARY . . .135 

THE COUPLE IN THE WIND ... l5l 

SNOW TRACKS TO THE WOODS . . 159 

LOT, THE RUSTIC 169 



UNDINE 

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UNDINE 
JUR Undine is a life-sized 
! bronze statuette of a little 
Igirl, with wavy hair and 
fclear eyes. Helayne and I 
3like to think her soft hair 
golden and her half-closed eyes very 
blue, perhaps because we see so much 
in them, that we think we are looking 
into the infinite blue of a broad heaven; 
perhaps, because the only other little 
person in our household has eyes that 
surpass the sky. 

She stands on the new old-fashioned 
mahogany desk in the library bow 
window, and, with drooping lids that 
hide her eyes, looks down, benignant 
and all-propitious, on the hearth of 
our only home. Although, in truth, we 

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bought her and took her away from a 
brightly-lighted jewell-filled window in 
one of the most noisy streets of a city, 
still, she is not at all a slave, as she 
very properly should not be in such 
enlightened days as these. But, she 
is very much of a tyrannical queen; 
a very jealous goddess who demands 
your all or none; a little immortalized 
deity of our household; our saint; the 
image of our Lares in spite of the 
Roman custom of having one of the 
opposite sex. 

Just as a child sees in a rag-doll and 
box fitted with curtains and furniture 
from Liliput, a little world of its own, 
just so, Helayne and I see a cosmos 
in the eyes of Undine. The little per- 
son, Thaddeus, being a child, of course 
sees with eyes like those of the little 
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mother with the rag-baby. Thus our 
household, our triple alliance, the fam- 
ily of which I am the proud head, live 
in the light of the spirit of Undine. 

At every meal, after the holy man- 
ner of ancient sacrifice and first fruits 
she is offered a prominent part of our 
simple repast. In all our joyful family 
occasions she has her part, and, be- 
cause our Sylvan World is daily full 
of those occasions, she wears her 
crown, —no jewell-studded rim of gold 
but a laurel wreath culled fresh, and 
green at all times. 

Our little Undine entered our Sylvan 
World when we did,~on a bright and 
clear day when the star bluets, in little 
crowds, gave an azure aspect to the 
lawn to the north; when the anemones 
swayed in the spring winds down in 
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the woods and the golden oriole hunt- 
ed insects in the bark and new leaves 
of the apple trees. 

From that time, her image has pre- 
sided over the lararia in our home, 
where, in the summer, we often sit with 
the songs of the birds floating in on 
the warm heavy air; and, in the winter, 
we join the old hearth circle when the 
fire light plays over her delicate feat- 
ures and casts a giant shadow of her 
on the heavy window curtains. 

At first, we knew little about her, but 
day after day, we came to love her 
more and more, and, as one very 
naturally does, we went to the lore of 
all lands and sought knowledge of her 
birth and life. 

And while we learned considerable 
about her and came to understand her 
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'T e'l^^-M'.c. K^. ^ 











character better, still we were not 
entirely pleased with what we found, 
for some of it was quite odd and un- 
usual and, perhaps, funny. 

Pagan people gave her Nisus, for 
her father —pagans, they gave her no 
mother. She began her life when, 
first, water was; her first play was a 
free chase over the sand and pebbles; 
her day's work was to sing a merry 
song while, on the banks, the wood 
nymphs danced with Pan as he piped. 

In the old Paracelsist fanciful system 
of things, she was the elementary 
spirit of water— a sort of a Naiade —a 
spirit without a soul, and only given 
one when she has borne a child to a 
mortal. But alas! in those days, no 
man ever drank of the spring or brook 
or lake or river, over which she pre- 
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sided, and therefore, she could not in- 
spire them with the gift God gave her, 
or, rouse in the breast an unquench- 
able love. 

Time went on, and some one, driven 
to a rural land by political faction or 
social ostracism, or ft-om a free desire 
of their own, came and wet his parch- 
ed lips at her shrine and when he re- 
turned among men they reverenced 
him, as a seer,~a Tiresias; or, sat at 
his feet and listened to his poetic 
strains,— a Homer; or, cast him forth 
a toy for the furies, ~a mad man, — a 
melancholiac,-- a fool. 

And, except for short occasional 
visits. Undine lived entirely alone—and 
waited—and waited— soulless! 

Years went by — centuries — we 
know not, how many. In their long 
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time, only a few~perhaps, one a year- 
one a century—went to her shrine and 
returned among men to tell of it. 
Many went there and never return- 
ed. Men in the outer world wondered 
why they did not. Stories went about 
that they had gone to some Circe, had 
tasted of the magic gold cup offered to 
them, and, probably, now they were 
wild beasts running about at the call 
of their mistress. 

Bold adventurers went, some out of 
curiosity; —some, to find the lost ones„ 
An adventurous son sought his father, 
an adventurous husband sought his 
wife-they had been told that all of the 
lost had been seen there, remaining, 
because they did not desire to leave 
that happy land. 

These misguided adventurers had 

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seen someone living and dying in 
peace. They coveted it. They heard 
that Undine would give it. They set 
out on their quest, ~ errant knights 
after another Holy Grail ~ and most 
of them returned and had nothing, but 
hardship, to tell other men. Others 
went all the way and bent the knee. 
But soon they also returned, because 
they had a false idea, which, in turn, 
they gave to their fellow men. 

Among these, Baron De La Motte 
Fouque told to the Germans a story 
about Undine~a very German story— 
in which she played the part of a sort 
of German coquette, coming from the 
country to a home in a city where she 
was looked upon as a princess rescued 
from some evil enchantment. 

W^e, with others perhaps, sought 
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Undine through the German eyes of 
Fouque ~we put his book aside, with 
never a word—with none of our desire 
satisfied— and we sought further. 

Before Fouque, John Oxenford and 
Sir Julius Benedict had journeyed to 
Undine's realm, had there formed a 
friendship with one another and had 
come back as companions. As a first 
fruit of that friendship, they gave to 
the world a cantata, called Undine. 

We have not heard this musical 
story of her charm and deification, but 
we praise Oxenford and Benedict, for 
we have been told, by those who did 
hear it, that it was very much of a 
choral piece and was very successfully 
given at rural Norwich. To us, our 
Undine, certainly would be in better 
harmony at a festival than in a 
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German city in Fouque*s poor story. 

Helayne and I have only found 
those three experiences of the seekers 
after Undine. We wondered a deal 
that some did not find dragons and 
enchanted palaces and giants and all 
kind of romantic adventure ~we 
thought that, perhaps, their journeys 
would have proved more interesting, 
if they had. To us, there did not seem 
to be such an ado about it ~ we found 
none of the difficulties that others 
had~we found the journey, if one can 
call it a journey, a very pleasant one. 
It did not seem long, we found 
much to interest us on the way and 
when we arrived there we bowed our 
heads to Undine just as we do to the 
image of her in our home. 

Her one realm is the Sylvan World, 
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where forests and brooks and birds 
abound, and, while a German city, and 
perhaps others, may think one, who 
comes from that world, to be rescued 
from an evil enchantment. Undine, in 
turn, certainly thinks the same of the 
city and she stays with her brooks and 
fountains and lakes and rivers in the 
more homely land and seldom bothers 
to send back a true errant knight in 
the cause of enlightening that city. 

Therefore, if you would know 
what peace and happiness and health 
we find, v/hen the knee bends at the 
shrine of Undine, you must be able to 
find that peace and happiness when 
you sit near a woodland brook in any 
rural land of yours and just look and 
listen, awed to silence in the presence 
of the great sylvan-world deity. Then 
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perhaps you will find, as we have, that 
Undine without a soul is better than 
many others with one. Then too, if 
there happens to be a little chubby 
hand in yours and a curly head in 
your lap and in the air a little laughter 
that melts into and harmonizes with 
the songs of the plumy race ~ then 
perhaps you will find, as one of the 
true errant knights did, that "God 
made the country and man made the 
town" and you will vow never again 
to aspire to city ideals and always to 
keep the laurel wreath on Undine's 
head fresh and green. 

For, the condition of the sacrificial 
wreath means much to the people in 
the Sylvan World. A green one, indi- 
cates that you have paid your vows to 
Undine to-day. A wrinkled one, that 
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you did so yesterday, perhaps. A sere 
leaf, that you have ceased your Undine 
worship and have returned to the city 
ideals. And so, by the wreath, the 
Undine worshippers can tell all about 
you. 

But, perhaps, in your conceit of 
cleverness, you think that you could 
easily deceive them or their Undine. 
We hope you do not. One man did. 
When he looked at Undine he did not 
see the holy expression that Helayne, 
little Thaddeus and I and other true 
worshippers do. No one knew what 
horrible thing he beheld; according to 
rumor he sought in vain to take the 
life of others and only succeeded in 
taking his own. 

In some seasons Helayne and I find 
that, on one day, we together have 
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not only placed the wreath on her 
head for our household, but each of us 
has, out of the fullness of the heart, 
done so. Sometimes we even have 
found little Thaddeus climbing up a 
pile of books to crown her with his 
little wreath. 

Some day in winter when one says, 

"A sad tale's best for winter. I have one 
Of sprites and goblins. ..." 

and the same little enthusiast is nestled 
in your arms and your Hela3nie sits 
opposite you at the fire, then, perhaps, 
Undine will be crowned a fifth time 
because, as you say, you watch the 
expression of Undine for inspiration for 
your "fairy story." And, as the sun 
moves from east to west in his days 
work, and travels from Undine's right 
to her left, the light on her changes 
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wonderfully; now giving her a stem 
calm of contentment; now changing 
the chiaroscuro about her eyes and 
mouth as she becomes benignant; now 
stealing around back of her head and 
leaving her mouth in semi-darkness 
with a faint smile lurking around the 
comers of it; now coming over her left 
shoulder, lighting up a part of her face, 
calming the mouth; and, now as the 
light in the sky dies away, she seems 
to become as reverent as if she, like all 
good little girls with souls, were saying 
her prayers before going to bed. 

The story of bears, sprites and fairies 
goes very much the same way — now 
stem and blood curdling; now promis- 
ing an escape from the fiends; now 
touching the humorous side of the 
adventure; now coming back to some 
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little child safe in father's strong arms. 
And thereafter, as the days follow on, 
and the little fellow who listens to your 
story comes to strength and character 
of manhood, some day you will see in 
his eyes the light of a new awakening 
and his song of praise of Undine and 
his stories of her will revive yours that 
have perhaps worn at the edges with 
time. Then indeed you will know 
that even though the boy is a man and 
the father and mother are wrinkled and 
grey, to every one who in all sincerity 
of heart goes to her realm and bend- 
ing the knee drinks of her inspiring 
fount, Undine remains as she was all 
the yesterdays and will be all the to- 
morrows. 



s^£ 







OUR SYLVAN WORLD 
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OUR SYLVAN WORLD 

fFTER we had made Un- 
) dine the one goddess of our 
household, after she had 
s.come to play a great part 
^in our very lives, our Sylvan 
World became almost an Arthurian 
Avalon to us~a little terrestrial Para- 
dise— a land haunted by kind spectres 
and good ghosts—where the hills echo 
the praises of the dead and the birds 
sing hymns to the living. 

Our Avilonian acres still have their 
groves and woods for woodland w)ld- 
ness; hamadryads still have their haunts 
here; nymphs still bathe in the clear 
waters; fauns and sat5a'S still watch and 
pipe their mellifluous music. Whether 
you find them all depends on the atti- 

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tude you take in seeking for them. 

If you come to our land, for refuge- 
to pay homage to Undine— you will find 
all that the heart desires and you will 
stay with us. If you come, seeking to 
lead back a father or wife, happy here, 
you will not see or feel any of the wood 
magic. If you covet our peace and 
happiness, you will find more trouble 
and unrest. If you come out of curios- 
ity; if you bring nothing and expect to 
go away heavy-laden with gold things 
your footfall in the land will send all the 
rural gods and goddesses in flight to 
secret comers; you will find in a tree, 
no dryad; in the air, no birds hymn; in a 
brook or lake or stream, no Undine. 

Helayne and I left the city, in distance 
far far behind us, in memory blotted 
out and unknown and settled a sylvan 
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home when the heart renewed leaps up 
in joy, when indeed 

"Sumer is icumen in 

Groweth sed, and bloweth med, 
And springth the wude nu— " 

We soon started to do the things 
Undine inspired us to— she with her 
woodland witchery led us here and 
there. And yet we found she was 
less of a bad witch and more of a good 
fairy. 

Under her direction, we fixed anew 
the long neglected garden and the rains 
came and it flourished. With her lead- 
ing, we tramped over the roads and 
bjrways and sought the banks of a wild 
brook; we listened to its waters; we 
culled its choicest flowers and we went 
back to the old red house and took the 

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song of birds and the sweet scent of 
flowers and a glad peaceful heart along 
with us. "When the time was ripe she 
called us and we went on a summer 
walk down to the river; we sought to 
know the animals near by; we watched 
birds in the trees; we came home with 
our arms full of wild flowers. W^e 
gazed with wonder on the heavens, 
watching Venus hang like an earring 
diamond in the sky. We wove pretty 
fictions about the starry land; we saw 
pretty fine couples there and Tiresias- 
like we imagined they had souls and 
sexes; so that we wondered if they were 
married too, and we hoped they had 
sylvan abodes and country solitudes 
and an Undine. 

Later, when the leaves went and the 
autumn came, we spent chilly days in 
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the library and study, where we took 
down from the shelves and read large 
volumes by men who had seen some- 
thing of a sylvan world and had wor- 
shipped at a shrine of Undine. We 
found many of them, for in these days 
her shrines are myriad. One man calls 
his sylvan land, Arden; another, Ar- 
cadia; another, Avalon; another, Eden, 
and so on even into the hundreds. 
Some people, from the earliest exiled 
monarch to the latest country lover, 
have sought a Sylvan 'World as the 
only solace. Fact and fancy have been 
ever at war for man's soul and the 
times run an interminable race from 
one to the other. In the past, countless 
numbers have left the town and gone 
out in the country and some of them, 
better seers than others, saw nymphs 
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and fauns and sat5^s sporting in the 
underwoods, and even some found the 
fairies dancing in their mystic circle as 
they wound their spell of enchantment. 
They, the seers, gave back to the land 
they had fled a pastoral scene of swains 
and shepherdesses; whereby they lead 
others to go to the country. Perhaps 
some one of the city men, who little 
knew what wonders the Undine wor- 
shipper heard and what sights he saw, 
came upon one of them, l5dng on the 
grass under the greenwood tree, looking 
up through the lace of leaves at the 
clouds, or sitting on the river bank, fish- 
ing. To the city man, just fishing; no 
gods or goddesses; none of that senti- 
mental stuff, as the realists call it. But 
when the fisherman was left alone, or 
another like him, met him; it was very 
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different, especially to those concerned^ 
Helayne and I were never alone in 
our land; we had found no island where 
we stayed as a Mr. and Mrs. Robinson 
Crusoe. Every day brought some new 
sound or sight to us; we saw all the 
host of people who inhabit all nature. 
At times there would be a veritable 
hymn of praise sung by all the sylvan 
deities; for a new soul had come to pay 
homage to the goddess and all nature 
rejoiced. Then too, letters from other 
sylvan lands were left in the door of the 
red house for us; letters that recalled 
men and women we had seen. Some 
of their messages were in extremity of 
sorrow or joy; some were messages of 
moderation, of man leading just the 
every day, simple, rural life as best he 
knows how. Our cup of happiness was 
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indeed full to overflowing when joyful 
tidings came; with sad ones, tears came 
to us even in our sylvan world. A 
marked newspaper told us of the death 
of the Octogenerian; another marked in 
just the same way told of the unexpect- 
ed, but well deserved, success in a dear 
friend's life work; we shed tears of joy 
and tears of sorrow, both coming from 
the same well, both wiped away by a 
like handkerchief 

Nights came and showers of fire 
skimmed across the heavens; we looked 
out at them from the cupola and we 
learned the goodness of God from the 
stars. We listened to the couple in the 
wind, night after night, and we grew 
accustomed to the creak of the ghost 
and did not wish the house exorcised. 
With all his ghoulishness, with all his 
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creaks and groans, we rather liked to 
have him haunt the house. He helped 
to raise the spirits of the dear dead; a 
groan came to mean a character to us. 
A sigh brought back that young colon- 
ial maid with her curls and low corsage, 
her hoop skirts, just as she attended 
that "great ball". A creak showed us 
the old stage coach scarcely moving 
through a mud hole on the old Concord 
road, the coachman snapping his whip 
at the leaders, the six horses straining 
to pull the coach through, big old men 
leaning out of the windows, scowling 
and storming at the condition of the 
road, in a comer, prim old maids hold- 
ing their knees and breath, "positive" 
that the wheels were going to break. 
At times the ghost grows humorous; 
at times disrespectful. He told us that 
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tn our land "a grasshopper was once 
seen perched upon the top of a dry 
mullen stalk, with the tears rolling down 
his cheeks, looking in vain to discover 
one stalk of green grass." Then while 
we laughed at him he slid out of the 
room and was quiet for the rest of that 
night. 

W^hen the first snow fall came, I 
left Helayne reading before the fire and 
went to the woods alone. I came back 
to her with cold face and hands, sat 
before the blaze and told her what I 
had seen. 

On another day, when I was at work 
in the study, she ran off like a truant 
and came back to me and told me what 
she had seen. So, we share our new 
Sylvan World sights. 





THE REAL IRISH SHAMROCK 



m 



THE REAL IRISH SHAMROCK 
|ODDY brings us berries 
afresh from the fields, and, 
(ever since we took up our 
/residence on the same 
^thoroughfare on which she 
lives, she has been a faithful protegee of 
Helayne's. She is a little freckled-faced 
red-haired girl about eleven— a chip of 
the old block, as they say,— a little un- 
tutored savage of the Concord road 
farm, more often found in the top of an 
apple tree than in the dairy at her 
chores. She has a wild hankering after 
gaudy ribbons and stockings, a more 
than normal heart beat at the tinsel on 
the circus women's clothes. Once she 
saw a play at the village "opera house" 
and when her father asked her about 

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it, the only thing she remembered, was 
that Lizzie Perkins went with her and 
'Lizzie Perkins had a new blue-and- 
green dress, and, the heroine in the play 
wore bright red leggings and a purple 
tarn o' shanter. 

The winter at the farm had been 
dull, as usual. The weather had proved 
more rainy than the country had seen 
for ten years, and, for a few weeks, 
Toddy found nothing to do but work in 
the dairy. 

"When a clear day had come round 
in March she was let loose again and 
with Lizzie Perkins she decided to pay 
a visit to the near-by town. 

Lizzie had saved seventy-five cents 
and a Canadian ten-cent piece. Toddy 
had a bright silver dollar and a twenty- 
five cent piece and two pennies. Lizzie 
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had on her old brown winter coat anc^ 
a cap belonging to her brother —she had 
it pulled tight on her head and over her 
ears for there was a cold biting wind 
coming from the north-west. Toddy 
wore a black coat and cap~a coat that 
gave her a look as if she had been 
melted and poured into it. It looked as 
if it pinched her all over. 

The two young ladies condescended 
to give a "good morning" to Hela5me 
as they passed our home on their way 
to the end of the trolley line where they 
boarded the car for town. Needless to 
say they made the trip both on their 
knees, looking out of the window. 

First they had to stop at the candy 

store ~ just for a little ~ for Toddy's 

father had given orders not to buy 

more than ten cents worth of candy. 

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Then, there was the ribbon counter at 
Bustard's ~ they surely wanted to go 
there. 

As they passed the florist, Toddy 
gave a jerk to Lizzie's arm and they 
stopped before the window and read 
the large green-lettered sign: 

"The Real Irish Shamrock!" 

"Oh, is n't that pretty?" cried Toddy. 

"Beau— ti~ful!" Lizzie agreed. 

"And such lovely pots they are in." 

"Y-e-s." 

"I'm going in and ask how much 
they are." 

The two entered the store rather 
shyly. The clerk bowed to them. 

"How much are the —the— pillow ~ 

rocks?" Toddy was all confusion and 

for a minute she did not really know 

whether she wanted to buy a sham- 

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rock or what she knew as a pillow sham. 

"The—the flowers—in the window." 

"Oh, you mean the shamrocks. One 
dollar." 

Toddy turned to Lizzie and Lizzie 
looked a perfect blank. 

"I'll take one-I guess.'* 

The clerk chose one from the "win- 
dow and talked as he did it up in tissue 
paper. It seemed to Toddy as if he 
would never finish it. 

"You see there is a flower on this one. 
Rather rare to get flowers on them. 
You want to keep it well-watered and 
give it a cool room. It grows fast." 

Lizzie whispered in Toddy's ear; 
whereupon she asked, 

"Is it the real one?" 

"Oh, yes. Real Irish shamrock." the 
clerk responded. 

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And so Toddy parted with her silver 
dollar, received the little plant, done up 
in four sheets of tissue paper, and, they 
blew out and down the street to the 
big store of Bustard's. 

At the ribbon counter the rest of 
their money went for pink and yellow 
ribbons and when they had shut the 
door and stepped out on the sidewalk, 
Toddy thought for the first time since 
she had had the shamrock put in her 
arms. 

"W^e have n't any money for the 
car!" she gasped. 

"What will we do?" Lizzie began 
to whine. 

"W^e might take some things back." 
Toddy answered. 

Then she thought of the ribbons~oh, 
no, she could not give those up. Then 
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she thought of the shamrock~oh, not 
that. Then of the candy —that would 
go-they could make some at home. 
But they had eaten it. Then a happy 
thought struck her and she almost 
yelled. 

"There comes Mr. Winton's car — 
we '11 take that~and father will pay 
him when he comes in town next time. 
Mother got trusted once." 

So, they boarded car number thirty- 
two and were soon at the end of the 
line. Toddy unceremoniously left Liz- 
zie at her gate and hurried across the 
road, home. She entered the kitchen 
and there met the whole family, ~ 
mother, father and brother Ned. 

"Oh, see what I have got." she spoke 
up. And she started to open the rib- 
bon package after she had put the 
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shamrock on the table near the door. 

While she was opening it she talked, 

"We forgot our fare, father, and Mr. 
Winton trusted us." 

The old man answered "yes." 

Then the ribbons were laid out to 
view and her mother looked them over 
while her father sat and looked at that 
other package, and, waited for her to 
open it. 

"But this is the fine thing." Toddy 
said, undoing the shamrock. 

Four pairs of eyes were on the won- 
derful package. One pair sparkled with 
joy, the other three stared in curiosity. 

"It 's a real Irish shamrock. It cost 
a dollar." Toddy said proudly. 

"Oh, Lord!" her father ejaculated. 
"It 's one of those pesky weeds fi*om 
the cow pasture." 



THOREAU IN OLD DUNSTABLE 
^ Igf ^ 







THOREAU IN OLD DUNSTABLE 

fND we rowed slowly on.... 

) looking for a solitary place 

in which to spend the night. 
. .W^e camped at length 

^near Penichook Brook, on 
the confines of what is now Nashville, 
by a deep ravine, under the skirts of a 
pine wood, where the dead pine leaves 
were our carpet, and their tawny 
boughs stretched overhead. But fire 
soon tamed the scene; the rocks con- 
sented to be our walls, and the pines 
our roof 

So Thoreau wrote, when, in 1839, he 
took his voyage on the Concord and 
Merrimack rivers; taking a long trip to 
Sylvan Worlds, in response to an appeal 
of Undine. And it gives a peculiar 

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charm to many of the walks and rides 
that Helayne and I take in our Sylvan 
World; the world once visited by the 
Concord naturalist. 

One day while on the river bank, 
Helayne and I saw two French boys 
in a boat floating by the current. We 
did not think much of it at the time; in 
truth if they had been men, we probably 
would never have had our attention 
drawn to their antics. The fact that 
they were boys, at least, made us hope- 
ful for their safety. 

About sixty-five years ago Thoreau 
went up and down the same river on 
which the boys floated by the current. 
Had it not been for the interest that he 
took in the banks of that river we 
would not have occasion to seek out 
the spot by the Pennichuck Brook, 
-42- 







where, sixty-five years ago, he camped. 

He sought a solitary place. He 
seems to have found it. 

". . We wrapped our buffaloes about 
us and lay down with our heads pillow- 
ed on our arms, listening awhile to the 
distant baying of a dog, or the mur- 
murs of the river, or to the wind, which 
had not gone to rest. 

Perhaps at midnight one was awak- 
ened by a cricket shrilly singing on his 
shoulder, or by a hunting spider in his 
eye, and was lulled asleep again by 
some streamlet purling its way along 
at the bottom of a wooded and rocky 
ravine in our neighborhood." 

I do not think we are liable to forget 

that part about the spider, and, the one 

thing we could wish, would be, that he 

might tell us how he managed to per- 

-43- 









suade the spider to allow him to fall 
asleep again. Is it not probable that 
Thoreau allowed it to finish the hunt 
and learn that his eye was no place for 
flies or webs? A good many people 
have learned almost as much about 
Thoreau. 

W^hen Helayne and I were recently 
in Concord, I gazed long at that little 
stone with "Henry" on it. Through a 
little book in our library I had come to 
feel as if I had some bond of fellowship 
with that simple man, buried beneath 
so simple a stone in Sleepy Hollow. 
Only I wished he had a Helayne and 
a Thaddeus. 

In Concord when we had climbed the 

hill and found the Thoreau lot, I had 

expected to see some such enclosure 

as that of Hawthorne, or some boulder 

-44- 






such as marks the resting place of 
Emerson. I saw a granite head-stone 
so small that I believe I could carry it 
as easy as a loaded dress-suit case. On 
it was the simple Christian name; no 
date; no quotation. All that, was left 
to be cut on the family stone, so that 
"Henry" was only one of the Thoreaus. 
Perhaps he wished it so, and perhaps, 
the people have respected his wishes 
more than Bowdoin College has re- 
spected those of its famous romancer. 

"When we were back in our Sylvan 
World we thought that Thoreau did 
not need any monument or tombstone 
credentials. We found that we could 
not go about our land without linking 
his name with it. 

It was not long after we had come to 
anciently - called Dunstable that we 
-45- 











happened to experience some of the 
same good fortune as Thoreau, when 
here. "We bought a book; a book that 
has some of the sentiment of a first 
edition. It is a first edition; but the 
book only went through one, so that its 
place of interest is due more to another 
fact about it. Thoreau read it and had 
it in his small library; a small book call- 
ed Fox's History of the Township of 
Old Dunstable. W^e are told by Chan- 
ning, in his storehouse of Thoreau 
reminiscence, how he came to obtain it. 
". . . And, knocking, as usual, at the 
best house, he went in and asked a 
young lady who made her appearance 
whether she had the book in question. 
She had,~it was produced. After con- 
sulting it, Thoreau in his sincere way 
inquired very modestly whether she 
-46- 








"would not sell it to him." I think the 
plan surprised her, and have heard she 
smiled: but he produced his wallet, gave 
her the pistareen, and went his way 
rejoicing with the book, which remain- 
ed in his small library." 

The fact that he bought Fox's book, 
and buying a book meant a good deal 
to him, even though he only paid 
twenty cents for it, that fact, shows 
that Thoreau had a great interest in 
the place. 

If you will read it over or even look 
up the references to it among his collect- 
ed works, you will easily see what the 
attraction was to Thoreau in our land. 

And he found much in our land, 

many times more than we can find at 

one glance. For, he is one of those 

rare souls who profited most because 

-47- 









he bowed at the shrine of Undine most 
often. 

Thoreau lived in very many Sylvan 
W^orlds and probably saw more than 
he thought profitable to tell to his 
neighbor men. Perhaps he was wait- 
ing and waiting for another man, as 
the fisherman waits for another fisher- 
man. 

Helayne and I rejoice because he did 
not leave us without singing a song of 
sad farewell. He must have been row- 
ing when he composed: 

Salmon Brook, 

Penichook, 
Ye sweet waters of my brain 

When shall I look, 

Or cast the hook. 
In your waves again? 







%i^ 




A BROOK AND ITS FLOWERS 



\$f 



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^ 






A BROOK AND ITS FLOWERS 
ELAYNE was busy about 
the house and I sat trying 
to read in the shade of the 
apple trees. I could not 
help but watch a humming 
bird feeding on the trumpet vine that 
climbs the back porch to my study. 

The day was warm and sunshiny, 
and, after the humming bird had dis- 
appeared and I had made vain attempts 
to centre my interest on the dull book, 
I left it in the middle of a chapter, went 
into the house to leave word of my in- 
tentions and started off on a rambling 
walk over the fields and down the hill 
to the brook near the Arcadian flat land 
where the cows chew their contentment 
cuds in the shade of the willow trees. 

-51- 








Of course I had put on my boots, my 
coat and collar I had left with the book, 
my shirt was open at the neck and 
sleeves rolled up. As soon as I reached 
my brook, in I went, ~ splash! The 
water cooled my feet, the trees afforded 
me shade and I started out, determined 
to know every little eccentricity of that 
miniature wild river. 

On such an idle day and in a country 
where "it seemed always afternoon," as 
it did in Lotus land, there was no great 
hurry, in fact I went slow, perhaps, not 
to hurt the brook, perhaps because the 
bed was of slate stone and quite able to 
protect itself by a green slimy scum 
that clings to it. For fear of a wet 
fall I always take warning from that 
scum and go slow. And then, besides, 
nature does not fix things so that he 
-52- 



-^IT'snL-M', 





^'^^ ^^ \ 







who runs may read, she has a little way 
of putting such scummy difficulties in 
our way to try and make us go slow 
enough to look about and see aU her 
beauty, and whether or not we sing her 
praises, lies at our mercy. 

Up, on the bank, among the grasses 
beside the brook, the thoroughwort 
stood tall, and, in the slow movement of 
the warm air, now and then, waved its 
leaves like hands at me. Heal-all, that 
common, jovial, little, fat fellow in royal 
purple, clung among the green of the 
bank, and, the jewel-weed stood and 
cried out "hands off." 

I glanced ahead and there at a turn 
stood four stalks of a bright red flower, 
conspicuous from its surroundings of 
dark green. For once I risked the 
danger of falling, rushing pell mell 
-53- 







■«e 



through the water for the cardinal— an 
uncommon flower in this part of the 
country —and I pulled it up by the roots 
so as to set it out in the smaller brook 
near our home. 

Soon, I happened upon a little falls 
where the water dropped two feet and 
sang the merriest of songs. To the 
left there was another course where 
the water used to run before the flat 
land over yonder was cleared and I 
stopped up the present course and turn- 
ed the brook into the old one. How 
still and death-like it ran! But then I 
thought the new course would be more 
attractive and I ran down its banks to 
see it. Before long I had reached the 
forks and went back up the course I 
had just dammed, and, at every turn, I 
was convinced, it was the best. When 
-54- 





^w«^^ 





I came back to the little dam the water 
was running over the new falls quite 
patiently but a conscience had roused 
me and I had decided. With one kick 
of my boot I sent mud and slate stones 
a-flying and the brook jumped forth 
joyously and went on in the course 
chosen by nature. To me, it seemed as 
if it sang a happier song at being let 
loose to run in its own sweet will again. 
Once in a while I had to go up on 
the bank— now, because my boots were 
not high enough to let me step in the 
pool, and, now, because some spider's 
web blocked my way. Then I began 
thinking of how the flies have two bad 
enemies near this brook— one, the min- 
nows, that fly helter skelter when the 
little watching fish runs in the pool 
ahead of me and perhaps tells the old 
-55- 







ones that a big giant is coming down 
stream at a terrific rate,~and, the other, 
the spider webs hung so near to the 
best part of the brook bed that the wary 
spider can come out when the fly is 
caught and wind him with web and let 
him hang there for another meal just as 
a country matron stores away two 
pieces of pie for the next day's dinner. 

A little further on, in the course, I 
crouched under an apple tree; a wild 
one that had to grow two-year-old 
thorns to protect itself from the cattle, 
and, as I thought, man also, for just as 
some prying "boss," they gave me a 
good stab in the head once or twice 
before I crawled out from under it. 

Up, on the flat land, I found hairy 
moth-mullein in little crowds perhaps 
counselling against the ironweed so 
-56- 



heartily hated by farmers. I passed a 
place where the bank rose high and 
steep. By leaning down and peering 
under the trees I could see a few clust- 
ers of that corpsy ghost flower, the 
Indian pipe. The bank was green with 
aged wintergreens and Dalibarda re- 
pens leaves and beside the brook were 
skull caps scattered along at irregular 
intervals. 

As I looked to the right and left my 
eye caught sight of a purple-clustered 
flower. Out of the cooling stream I 
jumped to the bank and ran as if chas- 
ing a rare butterfly. Here was a new 
reward of my passion— I had found a 
purple- fiinged orchid and my heart 
swelled with pride. I thought of the 
joy with which I would show it to 
Helayne. I placed it carefully among 
-57- 





the rest in my full hand and then re- 
turned to my brook. But here there 
was no going on. A bridge had barred 
the way and one cannot very safely 
and conveniently go under a brook 
bridge, so I scrambled up the bank and 
over the fence and hurried along the 
road toward home. I did not stop to 
think how I looked or how eager I acted 
but, with perspiration on my brow, just 
hustled along. Ten to one some farmer 
probably saw me and thought me to 
have grown a little childish or simple, 
but then I was thinking of a brook and 
its flowers. 

Here this little brook had led me in a 
most unreasonable course. I was not 
half a mile from the place where I had 
gone down the fields to it and here it 
had been doubling, meandering, stealing 
-58- 




under trees with thorns, hiding under 
overhanging banks, in fact pla)dng me 
all the Will-o'-the-wisp pranks possible. 
The heat had roused me up until far 
more uncomfortable than when start- 
ing and what had I profited by leaving 
the quiet shade of the apple trees and 
the apathetic book. Well, anyway, 
there was a purple-fringed orchid! 

Helayne met me at the door. 

"My! What have you? Here 's 
that common old moth-mullein. Lots 
of it in our neighbor's field. Here 's 
that heal-all - - " 

I dropped the flowers on the table 
and went up stairs for my old copy of 
Gray. On returning Helayne was 
gone—and my orchid had gone too! I 
called and called. She came. 

"Where 's my orchid?.' 
-59- 





No answer. She straightened one 
of the plates on the wall. 

"Did n't you take my orchid? Or, 
did Thaddeus?" 

"Orchid! What orchid?" she asked, 
innocently. 

"Must have lost it in climbing over 
the fence. I 'm going back for it." 

I turned toward the door. 

"Your orchid is in my book." she 
spoke up. "You mean old thing—you 
found one before me." 

I went out to the bam and got the 
spade to set out the cardinal. Helayne 
knew my pride about the orchid. 

The next day I asked her if she had 
a purple-fringed orchid in her book. 

"Do n't know." she answered. "Go 
and look." 

She surprised me. "Only yesterday. 
-60- 




Can she have forgotten it?" 

She went up stairs and presently re- 
turned all smiles— and mischief. 

"Yes. Here is one, found — found 
in Seymour's marsh." 

"You stole that out of my flowers, 
yesterday." 

"The idea! You did n't have an 
orchid yesterday. You lost one. Do 
n't you remember, you were going— " 

She turned away. Then it occured 
to me that she wanted to have the 
honor of finding that orchid. She 
laughed— and so did I. I knew, and 
she knew I did. 

Since then, of course, Helajme has 
been the botanical wonder of our little 
world, for she found the orchid first— at 
least she found it in the book, first. 




JULIUS 



JULIUS 
HAD gone for a little joiir- 
^ney up the Concord road, 
lout among farms and the 
|thickly wooded lands. An 
iold man hoeing near a bam 
caught my eye. I leaned on the fence 

rail and asked him the road to 

He straightened up, as much as his age 
allowed him, looked round at me and 
told me to take the road to the left. 
His large forehead—an indication of 
a genius or a fool—his small eyes, with 
a dreamer's dreaminess in them, his 
long gray hair, his two teeth one in each 
jaw, led me to start a conversation 
with him. 

"Beautiful country up here." I re- 
marked, looking around and giving him 

-65- 



a chance to take up the talk there, or 
else with a grunt to return to his hoeing. 

He did not follow my line of thought 
for most farmers do not say very much 
about the farm being beautiful, either 
because they are seldom ever aesthetes, 
and, if they are, their familiarity with 
the place makes it nothing wonderful. 
He met me half way and asked if I 
knew a certain man, naming one from 
the city near our sylvan home. WTien 
he found I did he said he had been long 
waiting to hear from that man about 
his ''book." 

Helayne can tell you how the men- 
tion of the book affected me. Not in 
vain had I been somehow drawn to a 
man who would appear to most good 
people as anything but attractive. 
Now that the ground proved favorable 
-66- 





I wished to get at the mind of the man; 
to strip him of his ugly externals; to un- 
derstand his nature, all, through the 
book that I wanted to see. When I 
asked him for it he favored me with a 
rare smile, showed unbounded delight 
and also his two teeth. His old wife 
came to the door. 

"Julius, that wood needs chopping!" 

"I can't bother with that now, this 
young man wants to see my book." 

And, while he went into the house, 
I stood and looked at the lichen-cover- 
ed well and the bucket, kicking my foot 
against the edge of the rotten boards 
in the walk. 

He soon came out with the "book." 

It was a twenty page pamphlet, with a 

buff-colored cover, the title, —well, never 

mind the title, it was probably taken 

-67- 



from some history that he read, and it 
bore little relation to the substance of 
the pamphlet. The man was of more 
interest than the title or the contents, so 
I went on in my conversation. 

Having glanced over the pages, I 
told him I would like to read it all. He 
said I could have it. But I asked him 
if he sold it~he rather reluctantly said 

he had it on sale in the store at 

but had not sold any. Then I asked 
him what the price was and gave him 
the money. 

I expected he would want to go back 
to the barn to work when I had bought 
it, but he was not going to let me off 
so easily. 

"Do you write?" he asked. 

"Some." I replied. 

"Have you got one of your books? 
-68- 





With you?" 

"No. I have n't" was my reply. 

"Well, when you come up here 
again, bring me one, will you?" 

I said I would. 

"Do you know, I love to write. Why 
I just love to think and think and think 
and write." And then after a little 
pause he said: "I want to write some- 
thing that people will read after I'm 
dead." 

^ ^ dJff dJf 

The next winter, on inquiring after 
the old man I learned that he and his 
wife had perished in the burning of 
their home. Often, we read Julius* 
little book. 



M> 



THE GARDEN 



^ 



^ 








THE GARDEN 
WHIPPORWILL'S song 
was the first sound I heard 
in the early morning. I 
^had not opened my eyes 
I when down in the garden 
somewhere he let burst his melody, 
singing it out as fast as he could; a 
most melodious song, sweeter and 
sweeter because it fled quite away, and 
returned again after its composer had 
rested a little. 

After the morning meal, when I went 
out of the house and down the path to 
the garden door, I found the evening 
primroses had forgotten themselves and 
were staring eyes open wide at the 
sunlight. The whipporwill had gone 
with the night and only a few English 

-73- 










sparrows flew up from the walk, and a 
robber robin sneaked out of the cherry 
tree. 

Of course our sylvan world would be 
imperfect without the garden delight 
and a good garden serves more of a 
purpose than to give one an hour or 
two every day in which the hands get 
soiled with earth. If there is any one 
thing that will give you health and 
hope and patience, it is a garden, and 
more than one pen will attest that fact. 

Our garden is a simple, old-fashioned 
place. W^e did not follow out any 
Baconian plan or use more of our land 
than one acre to set out one for each 
month of the year, as Bacon suggests. 
I rather imagine that if Bacon ever 
took care of one garden he would have 
found twelve of them rather an elephant 
-74- 





on his hands and far from a delight—at 
least if he got anything out of them. 
But, of course, Bacon was writing "of 
gardens" for English country gentle- 
men, and they had enough gardeners 
in their establishments to keep even 
more than a dozen. 

But, one Bacon garden would have 
little in it to show each month,-- three 
or four trees in bloom and not many 
more flowers. To us, the greatest de- 
lights in the garden aire the deceit of 
the perfume and the veritable state of 
disorder and panic among the beds. 

Now, from the scent, you are sure 
there are only roses there. The next 
instant you change your mind and say 
they are sweet peas. A little later you 
think they were neither roses or sweet 
peas but nasturtiums and then you give 
-75- 









it up, to be impressed the same way a 
few minutes later. 

The looks of the garden would almost 
make you think we had sown a sort of 
a porridge-of-seed within the confines 
of four lichen-covered walls, to give an 
illustration of survival of the fittest. 
But then, that is not the case. 

Helayne and I go out there of an 
afternoon and by a careful selection of 
the strong and healthy we assist the 
promising plants by clearing out the in- 
firm and crippled, a sort of a savage 
Canadian method of preservation of 
the favored in the struggle for life. 

And so it is that we have our garden 
well in control, although it does not 
look so, and the bluets and golden-rod 
and evening primroses and rabbit foot 
clover and other flowers called wild are 
-76- 



'"C ^Jk-M.' 




OK "^^a-Hia* 'Vf b ""SS^ f^s' <*uS''*»- 







driven out of our little Paradise and the 
domesticated ones are given all the 
opportunities possible to grow up and 
become favorites. 

However, at the same time, there is 
little formal method in our gardening— 
of course I mean in the arrangement of 
the various flowers,~for as one looks on 
them from our chamber windows they 
appear to be just a mass of all colors, 
some making pleasant harmonies and 
others horrible discords; a red poppy 
killing, so to speak, a purple phlox; a 
delicate purple morning-glory blending 
with a cream-colored hoUyhawk that 
grows near the western wall where the 
morning-glories gamble. But, more 
about the delights of the garden. 

In the centre there is a square, paved 
with gravel, surrounded by trees trim- 
-77- 







med low, and, furnished with an east 
and west high-back seat. In the centre 
there is a sundial with Tennyson's 
much beloved motto, non numero horas 
nisi Serenas— I mark only the sunny 
hours. 

We had originally planned to make 
a flower sundial, having a flower as the 
symbol for each hour. Then the idea 
struck us to have one flower with diff- 
erent colors for each hour; but, we had 
not quite made up our mind, when one 
day, a native had the courage to look 
in the door as we were at work, and I 
invited him in. 

He looked around, walked up and 
down the paths, stopped at the wall 
shaded from the sun, felt of the ivy sent 
us from Stratford and finally sat down 
on the seat near the west wall where I 
-78- 




was working at the turban-like tulips. 

"What do you callate to set that 'ere 
square to?" he asked; for the centre was 
spaded up, and, of course I had not yet 
thought of gravel. 

"We have n't decided yet." I answer- 
ed. "We thought of making a flower 
sundial there." 

The visitor was silent. Presently he 
spoke up. 

"W^ould you like an old brass un?" 

At that, I thought Helayne had found 
a snake among her roses, she gave such 
a jump. 

And so it was we found a real sun- 
dial and discarded the thought of doing 
any design work with theflowers,~and 
the motto we dug out of an old volume 
in the library and the pedestal was cut 
out of the state granite by a local cutter. 
-79- 




When the sky is touched up by a 
summer's sunset and the day's work of 
the sundial is done, we often sit on the 
east seat and read aloud from some 
out-door author, or, together, in silence, 
watch the heavens as they change to 
tints of purples and pinks and yellows. 

There we sat and watched the sun 
go down back of a bank of pink clouds, 
at the close of our first year of wedded 
life at home, and later, when all the 
colors blended into the gray of twilight 
and we went through the covered gate- 
way and into the house, the Bob White 
called and called us back to sit on the 
opposite seat amid a Paradise perfume 
and w^tch the pumpkin-pie moon come 
over the woodbined wall at the other 
end of the garden. 




•:^ 




M U "X^ik^ 



A SUMMER PATH TO A RIVER 



^ 



^ 





A SUMMER PATH TO A RIVER 
^RAISES of walking and 
nature - walks have been 
'many and the men ^vho 
ahave sung those praises are 
^as varied in temper as they 
are numerous. Men such as White, 
Jefferies, Thoreau and Burroughs have 
given us the fruits of their observation 
while walking, Stevenson has given us 
the best ideas on the abstract subject, 
while other men such as Hawthorne 
and Browning happened on many new 
inspirations while walking the same old 
paths. All these men, and one more, 
have been favorites of ours and never 
have we walked without their names 
on our lips. Cowper is that other one. 
He knew a good deal of walking and 
there are seven lines of his poetry that 
-83- 








express, with a few exceptions, all the 
delights that the average man takes in 
a summer's path. 



"For I have loved the rural walk through lanes 
Of grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep 
And skirted thick with intertexture firm 
Of thorny boughs; have loved the rural walk 
O'er hills, through valleys, and by river's brink, 
E'er since a truant boy I passed my bounds 
To enjoy a ramble on the banks of Thames;" 

Many of us have known what a 
rural walk like that means to a truant 
schoolboy. He only needs to have 
gone over one hill and perhaps down 
into one valley before he has entirely 
forgotten the book and the ferule. 

At the height of his happiness when 
he turns a green lane and his father 
siezes him by the collar, the hard bony 
hand or a good willow stick interrupts 
the Elysian dream of the rambler, and 
-84- 




the song of birds and the tinkle of the 
bell on the cow and the humming of 
the honey bee or insect and the river 
and the flowers, all fly away and the 
almost bare walls of the school room 
and the ugly black boards and figures 
and uninteresting books take their 
place. That is the way the truant boy 
finds it~the way Cowper found it. 

Next to the piscatorial pastime of the 
Isaac Walton type there is nothing like 
a "rural walk o'er the hills through 
valleys and by river's brink," for the 
mature man as well as the truant boy. 

If you go free fi-om care and duty 
you will not only get much food for 
healthy thought but an unconscious 
"constitutional" as well. You can go 
alone as Stevenson advises, you can 
take a child with you, you can go with 
-85- 




your Helayne, despite Stevenson's idea 
that you will have to mince steps with 
a woman. You do not want to hurry, 
you do not want to walk faster than 
Helayne can, you do not want to feel 
any of the loneliness that the absence 
of a human being gives one in the 
woods and so, why not take Helayne? 
Especially if she is in any way like you 
in taste. 

While they are walking past all the 
wealth nature can display, certain men 
figure percentages and count on the 
weaknesses of poor humanity to make 
a new article sell well or float a new 
bond in some get-rich-quick company 
that will pay in annual dividends more 
than you invest and then wUl give you 
common stock of the same value, as a 
bonus. On the other hand there have 
-86- 




been men decrepit and old who took the 
same walk by the aid of a stout stick 
and they thought of other things. We 
are a good deal like those old men. 

When we had been in the garden 
for a little afternoon attention to our 
garden delights, when a row of holly- 
hawks had been transplanted and an 
apron full of red roses gathered for the 
house, when Thaddeus was tucked in 
his bed watched over by a good do- 
mestic, we left at home all thought for 
the morrow, all care and duty, and with 
ft-ee hands and hearts, we strolled down 
the golden fields and along the wiggly 
path to the woods. 

The swallows were darting here and 

there, pouncing on some summer's 

insect. Up in a neighbor's field a sable 

company of ejaculating crows were 

-87- 






holding a council of war preparatory to 
an invasion of a near corn-field where 
an old straw man slowly swayed in the 
weak wind and at times posed in an 
idiotic posture. Large, cottony Delect- 
able-mountain clouds floated overhead 
in the heavens, cross old bumble bees 
buzzing their greviances flew to another 
flower, and twigs snapped under foot to 
warn the little creatures of the under- 
woods that the giants were coming to 
take another look at their haunts. 

That was the day we went down 
through our golden-rod fields and found 
an Arcady among the oak and pine. 

The path was one that had probably 
been followed by those old men and 
truant boys; it was not straight and 
cleared of underbrush and levelled, as 
the business man would have it; in and 
-88- 




out it wound, around obstructing trees, 
around an evergreen copse; ~a path that 
would have killed a Stevenson if he 
hurried. 

I, the taller, went ahead and made 
doorways among the cobwebs. Violets 
grew temptingly along the path, birds 
took to wing from the trees before us, 
insects fled the sunny spots, to return 
after we had passed. 

W^e stopped to rest and I lighted a 
fire after I had built a little fireplace of 
stones and had collected some oak 
leaves and twigs and branches. My 
Helayne sat Turk fashion, with her feet 
under her, and made the violets into a 
large bouquet. From my pipe I blew 
clouds of smoke that rose slowly, with- 
out wavering, in the warm air. The 
chirping told of the return of the birds. 
-89- 




There was no running brook near in 
which we might find a book, we did not 
like the sermons in the stones, and so I 
took a little book from my side pocket. 

"Violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea's breath; . . ." 

And I read more of that partly pas- 
toral play of Shakespeare. 

So we sat until the last twig had 
curled up and fallen to ashes, and then 
a choir invisible sang songs to us. 

Peep, chick a dee dee dee dee dee ~ 
one sang, and another answered. Bob- 
~b Wliite ! ~ went another. Thump, 
thump, thump, ~ went the red-bellied 
woodpecker. And then a train whistle 
and a distant rumble and a trembling of 
the ground and all the birds were quiet. 
W^e arose and went on. 
-90- 





Near the pine copse we came to the 
spot, where, on a former day,I had read 
from another play and had imitated 
Orlando. My Rosalind should have 
her name carved on a tree and verses 
hung on the hawthorn hedges for her, 
so that 

"... these trees shall be my books 
And in their barkes my thoughts He character 
That every eye, which in this Forest lookes 
Shall see thy vertue witneft every where." 

And so I had carved a letter for the 
name of Helayne, cut it deep in the bark 
of a mature sympathetic pine, as a sign 
of the love I bore her, just as the lovers 
express themselves in a Greek novel. 

We came down the sandy bank and 
under the branches of the pollard wil- 
lows to the riverside and there we sat 
and watched the waters moving slow 
and eternal to the sea. Here the river 
-91- 





had worn its sluggish way through our 
broad valley, the stream channel widen- 
ing as the terraced banks add to the 
river's load. And so it goes on, for 
year after year and into the centuries. 
And, in spite of the time passed, the river 
is still young, and, opposite to human 
nature, does not meander in fickleness 
as the old rivers do, but makes straight 
long courses and slow bends. 

As we sat on the bank and perhaps 
tempted the finny race with grubs 
from a rotted stump, the contemplative 
man could not help but go back and 
rehearse some of the scenes that have 
been enacted there long long ago. In 
the river we saw the lore and legend 
of the land, the Indian fights, the hard 
struggles of settlers to make the home 
hearth safe, to gain a living fi-om the 
-92- 




GRAVEYARD GOSSIP 






GRAVEYARD GOSSIP 

ELAYNE knows a woman 
who holds the peculiar po- 
sition of "friend of the 
^family." We call her Cos- 
emetic Carrie — the reason 
will be seen presently. 

I believe she is nearing the seventy 
mark in age, she wears a wig, lines up 
her eyebrows, rouges her cheeks and 
colors her lips. Once she even confided 
to Helayne that she always used lots of 
powder after her bath. When she 
enters the room the reason of her name 
is quite clear, every room she rests in 
she permeates with the odor of a "green 
room." You meet her, give her one 
glance and say, under your breath, 
Cosmetic Carrie. 

-97- 












A short time ago she came to stay 
over night to see our home—and inci- 
dentally, what sort of a husband and 
child Helayne had. She begged to be 
allowed to have the windows of her 
room closed, she would like another 
coverlet, and something to wrap around 
her feet when she had put on her bed- 
room slippers, then perhaps if it would 
not be too much trouble she would like 
the water bottle, and then she would be 
everlasting grateful if there were some 
sort of a shawl she could put about her 
shoulders. W^ell, she got them all and 
Helayne smiled a bit and left her. 

During the night the steam pipes 
banged and cracked and the heat came 
so fast I had to get up and shut it off— 
and Helayne said something sleepy 
about running the heater like mad. 
-98- 





In the morning Helayne went in to 
see our guest, expecting to find her 
roasted to death. C. C. embraced her 
and blessed her eternally, she had had 
the most lovely night she ever had. 
Helayne simulated some duty so as to 
get away from those cosmetics and to 
keep herself from fainting. When C. 
C. was down stairs I had to take my 
turn and save the room for another 
visitor whom we were expecting the 
next week. I stood it as best I could 
but hung out of the window when I 
had opened it. 

That afternoon, when we were talk- 
ing in the library, and I could n't smoke 
for C. C. "hated the filthy weed," she 
suggested to Helayne a walk to the 
graveyard. Of course we knew she 
had had relatives here so we took it 
L or - -99- 










for granted that she bore an affection 
to some one of them dead, and Helayne 
very reverently agreed to go—and we 
asked no questions. 

Of course the walk was agreeable— 
they talked and talked and talked. 
Carrie thought Helayne had a "most 
delightful husband," "but it is too bad 
he smokes." Her dear nephew Bertie, 
just too nice for words, he never had 
lighted a pipe or cigarette in his life, 
she would swear it. Of course he used 
to go off with a nice drummer every 
Saturday, a little fiin that he had, but 
she knew he only played pool, and he 
had liked peppermint candy ever since 
he was a baby. 

The night before, Helayne had called 
my attention to a beautiful diamond 
pin she wore in the back of her neck 
-100- 







ribbon. When they were on the way 
to the graveyard, Carrie suddenly gave 
a little cry and begged Helayne to try 
and stop that something from sticking 
in her neck. Helayne searched, she 
saw the diamond pin,~of course Carrie 
wanted her to,~she could not find any- 
thing out of the way, Carrie felt all 
right, and so they went on. 

Helayne thought Carrie would lead 
her along the roads to some little grave 
where she would have to stand and 
look about her while Carrie wiped 
away a tear or two—and perhaps some 
paint with it. 

They walked down one path, across 
the cemetery by another, back again, 
across again. Helayne began to won- 
der. Cosmetic Carrie began to tell her 
some gossip about some man out in 
-101- 






Oklahoma, some rascal, a regular old 
villain, he had helped to have Carrie 
dismissed from her work, he had plotted 
with the mayor and the police and 
heavens only knows perhaps the Czar 
of Russia to have her position taken 
away from her. To Helayne it went 
in one ear and out the other, and then 
Carrie became a little tired and worked 
up, and suggested they "might go now." 
Helayne gave a sigh of relief and they 
boarded the car for home. 

A couple of hours later, when I had 
lighted my cigar after seeing Cosmetic 
Carrie on the car for the station, we 
sat in the library. When she had told 
me of their mournful visit to the grave- 
yard I asked Helayne what finally 
became of the villain. Poor Hela5me 
did not know whether he succeeded in 

-102- 





^fc4 '-i^O. ■ ' I), tj '^-^ 



"FOXY" 



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^ 




"FOXY" 
jHE story of Narcissus is 
feomewhat known by most 
^people of our time, at least 
/the average person knows 
teat he was the youth who 
saw his own reflection in the water, 
pined away with love for it, and from 
whose remains the flower Narcissus 
sprung up. Ethelbert Nevin knew 
something of the story and made his 
name immortal by a rippling "water 
scene" based on the myth. 

If you read the original story as it 
appears in Ovid you will find that there 
are some moral lessons in it, as well as 
a pleasant little creation myth of the 
flower. 

If you have in mind the "pretty part," 
-107- 




as we might call it, of the flower, the 
part that appeals most to us, of the 
origin of the delicate white flower with 
the yellow centre, I think you will per- 
haps find some of the same charm in 
the little story of "Foxy". Perhaps I 
had better begin by telling you the way 
in which I happened to hear it. 

I was paying an afternoon's visit to 
the farm of a friend, the daughter of the 
Octogenerian. She and I had an in- 
terest in common, namely; landscape 
painting, and I had driven eight or nine 
miles across country to see her home. 

The Octogenerian was about five 
feet six or seven, rather slight in build, 
hardened by work in winter winds and 
summer suns, a man with a noble brow, 
a strong, set mouth and a chin that in- 
dicated determination. He was a rare 
-108- 




farmer, a happy harmony of homely 
traits and artistic temperament, perhaps 
that is why his daughter was a painter. 
At his farm you would not find things 
to hurt your eyes, so to speak; the place 
seemed to have an unusual air of re- 
finement about it. 

We sat on the stoop for a while talk- 
ing and two fox terriers soon made 
friends with me and licked my hand 
and sat in my lap. Then we took a 
stroll through the orchard and vineyard 
and flower gardens. 

We had visited the pine grove and 
here and there had stopped at leafy 
bowers in which stumps of long dead 
trees had been cut and fitted together 
to form seats. We had passed rare 
bushes and trees, many of them grafted, 
and bed after bed of old-fashioned 
-109- 



flowers, and as we came before a large 
cluster of hoUyhawk, my companion 
held one of the red-streaked cream- 
colored flowers in his hand and stood 
there spellbound, repeating over and 
over again, "poor Foxy, poor Foxy, 
poo - - r Foxy." 

I looked at him and his sad face hin- 
dered me from asking the question I 
had in mind. I did not need to ask it, 
the heart of the man made him want 
to tell me of it and he asked me if I 
would like to hear of Foxy. 

Then in a lower than conversation 
tone that gave to the story a reverence 
only equalled by the hush in an empty 
cathedral he told me a little American 
country happening that stands superior 
to any creation myth, even that of the 
boy Narcissus. 

-110- 




There was one of the litter of fox 
terriers that he liked the most, partly 
because in its play it always rolled over 
on the ground and thereby drew more 
attention to it, and, partly because it was 
so much more affectionate than all 
the others. 

^Vhen it grew strong enough he 
used to take it to the fields with him 
and the little fellow romped about and 
played tirelessly with the men when 
resting in their harvesting. 

One day when they were working 
they missed Foxy and thought that he 
had gone back to the house. And a 
little later they hitched the horses to 
the hay wagon and started. A little 
muffled cry came from under the rear 
wagon wheel and they stopped and 
jumped off to the ground. Then, the 
-111- 



old gray-haired man said "poor Fox 
for the first time, and with tears rolling 
down his cheeks took up the warm 
little body and walked across the field. 
He felt it grow cold in his arms and 
when he reached the garden he laid it 
among the flowers and got the spade 
fi-om the barn. 

The year after, hollyhawks grew up 
all about the grave. He said he had 
other varieties in color, but these were 
cream-colored, and through them a 
little streak, red as blood. 

When he stopped, he looked down at 
the ground and only said, again, "poo-r 
Foxy." 




ANTIQUES AND ANTIQUARIES 



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)i^ 




ANTIQUES AND ANTIQUARIES 
)F YOU are an antique 
collector perhaps the ex- 
iperiences of Helayne and 
|I will help you some. If 
jyou go into a so-called an- 
tique store there always will be a 
character study something after this 
manner. 

You walk into an antique store, the 
man comes to meet you, he knows by 
the way you open the door whether 
you are out "buying" or "just looking 
around." Of course you affect a non- 
concern about something you price, he 
has seen that non-concern before and 
ten to one he knows whether or not it 
is affected. 
You walk about the store, he has had 
-115- 




other store walkers and it gives him a 
chance to size you up from your ap- 
pearance. You give a start when you 
see something you would like, he has 
studied other faces besides yours, and 
perhaps ones that are better deceivers. 
And so it goes on, the character study. 
Is it quite clear to you? But when you 
turn his method on him it is another 
affair, and you do not buy so much and 
what you get is better and possibly a 
real antique. 

The definition of antiques as you buy 
them on Boylston street, Boston or 
Fourth avenue. New York is rather in- 
definite. I suppose it depends on what 
it means to each buyer, a subjective 
definition. At least, to me, a table, with 
a cherry top, finished in mahogany and 
a mahogany frame and one leg new or 
-116- 





replaced from some other table, and the 
handle to the drawer new, and the front 
of the drawer replaced from another 
drawer and blocks set in the legs to 
conceal the place where a shelf used to 
be, and all that,~you probably have run 
across them—that table is not an antique 
any more than a building built of old 
second-hand lumber. That table, to 
me, is like the beautiful Smith college 
girl photograph I once heard of It 
was a composite, and into it, entered 
the skeleton grind as well as the fair 
one who just keeps her standing high 
enough to allow her to be an athlete. 
You see, the table or picture, which- 
ever you will, is a conglomeration of 
parts that parade around under a pleas- 
ant name. It would not be advisable 
to inquire into the history of the table 
-117- 




any more than to go to Smith to see 
that girl. 

Then, there is another thing one must 
adopt in an antique store. You must 
not lie to the man, for if you do, he will 
be a better Ananias than you. Do not 
tell him you can get a table for a dollar 
less than that—he knows for how much 
you can get one. Do not edge around 
and go out—he can tell, by the way 
you do it, if you are coming back again. 
Treat the man as you would any other 
store keeper, do not try and find out 
how much profit he is making, take it 
for granted he is getting a profit big 
enough to pay his fashionable-street 
rent and to give him a few of the dain- 
ties of life. 

Down in the city, on one of the car 
streets there used to live a man to 
-118- 




whom we often went for an antique. 
He lived in four rooms in a little tene- 
ment, one on each floor for the antiques, 
while the other two made up all he had 
of a home. 

In summer it was a pretty place, the 
windows lined with blue plates and cups 
and pitchers, the gabled roof and the 
little pointed protection to the door. 
It faced on a yard decked in reds and 
blacks and blues on the wash-day when 
we first went there. Before the door 
there was a line of maple trees and a 
road and a lawn, half sunny. 

Mr. B was a short, somewhat 

corpulent man, had a double chin and 
legs accentuated in their bow by the 
uncreased trousers that reached only 
below the shoe tops. He liked a cap 
on the back of his head, partly gray, 
-119- 




and a red crocheted coat. His double 
chin and set bull-doggish mouth gave 
him a serious expression except when 
the crow's feet came around his small 
blue eyes and a laugh released the 
tension of his jaw. 

The first time I met him he gave me 
a feeling of security, a sort of a confi- 
dence in the man, even though he pre- 
tended to be an antiquary and I an 
innocent. I looked at a table, a round 
centre one, that he probably has yet, 
because of his honesty. Half a dozen 
have been on the point of buying that 
table, when he tells them the top has 
been cut down fi-om another they do 
not take it, but they come back, perhaps 
to buy, he says. I looked at that table 
and I have gone back a good many 
times. 

-120- 




B. hands out a candlestick and says,- 

"Here's one that is very squrse. 
They used to take it with them in the 
bag when they travelled and they just 
took it out and screwed it together like 
this and put the candle in it when they 
wanted to write or like that." 

B. has told that "squrse" story every 
time I have been in his shop,~but he 
tells other stories. I looked at some 
blue plates,-- 

"Those are n't old." he said. "I bought 
those for ten cents down town to put in 
the window for an adver-tise-ment." 

He put his hand in his side pocket 
and withdrew something in wrapping 
paper. "But, here is a cup plate." he 
went on as he opened it. "That 's 
awfully old— awfully, awfully old— it *s 
historical— why a lady said she would 

-121- 




give me fifteen dollars for it if it was n't 
cracked." 

After looking it over I asked if he had 
any more furniture and we went up 
stairs to see a four -posted bed and some 
bureaus, all of which he took great pride 
in because he had "finished" them. 

"Is that bed mahogany?" I asked. 

"Oh, my, no!" he answered. "It's 
solid cherry with mahogany finish on it." 

"You put it on hot, do n't you?" 

"Boiling hot. First scrape it, then 
the mahogany finish, then sand paper, 
then two coats of shellac, then the sand 
paper again, then varnish." 

I began to wonder if my "mahogany" 
chest of drawers I bought in Boston 
was cherry. In fact, I decided, then 
and there, to learn to identify the real 
article. 

-122- 





"Have you a banjo clock?" I asked, 
"Nope." Then he added, "I used to 
sell them for five dollars, lots of them, 
before I know'd better, know'd they 
were squrse, but I 've learned better 
now, you see I doubled my money and 
that 's what I wanted. But do you 
know I 've heerd that them there fel- 
lows in Boston and New York get big 
big prices for them, and I suppose they 
sometimes get a hundred dollars for 
them. No, I hai n't got one. I wish 
I had." 

And so he goes on, ever pleasant^ 
ever interesting, ever honest, honest to 
a fault, for he wants you to come back 
and buy more. Of course he knew us, 
he did not fear we were buying as 
dealers or going to pick them up and 
ship them to Boston to bring a higher 
-123- 




price in return for his confidence in us. 
But he did sell to dealers. And he al- 
ways got the price that gave him his 
little profit and that was what he was 
looking for. And the dealers, of course 
found that an easy way to buy, —and so 
it goes. 

I believe B has moved into new 

quarters, he has probably made money, 
and deserves to. At least I have been 
told that he looks happier and is jollier 
than ever. If you ever happen on him 
you will probably find him just the 
same as I did, unless you try and beat 

him. But remember B is an old 

antiquary and the character study goes 
on in his shop just the same as in all 
others. 




THE GOONACK 



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THE GOONACK 
.-®)IXTLE curly-haired, blue- 
eyed Thaddeus will tell you 
there is a rare book in our 
household that excels all 
the others without pictures. 
It is our animal book. In that book you 
will find some astonishing information 
about monsters and if it does not make 
you see things at night it is not the 
fault ot the narrator. Take for instance 
these that I just recently read to the 
little fellow. 

The Brontops Robustus~a new ex- 
tinct quadruped from North America, 
a robust fellow, height eight feet, heavy 
and massive, larger than any of the 
Dinocerata, with a length of nearly 
twelve feet, without tail. The limbs 
-127- 




are not so long as the elephant which 
it nearly equals in size. Feeds on apple 
trees eating them like humans eat 
watercress. 

"That 's why the boys keep out of 
our orchard." Thaddeus told me. 

At different times, one of us armed 
with a gun and the other with a bow 
and arrow have watched for the Bron- 
tops— but we have not seen him. One 
night we thought we heard him but it 
was too bold to go out and we liked 
the fire better. 

Megalosaurus Bucklandi ~ this is a 
carnivorous Dinosaur, about twenty- 
five feet long. It is not difficult to im- 
agine a megalosaurus lying in wait for 
his prey, perhaps a slender little harm- 
less newsboy, with his limbs bent under 
his body so as to bring his heels to the 
-128- 




ground and then with one terrific bound 
from those long legs springing onto the 
prey and holding it tight in its claws, as 
a cat does a mouse, then the sabre-like 
teeth would be brought into action and 
crunch, crunch, crunch! 

"Perhaps that is why I would n't be 
a newsboy," a certain person told me 
before the library fire. 

The Mososaurus, the largest sea 
snake, about a block long, he is a side- 
wheeler, he has a set of paddles, a long 
neck, a flat pointed head, a very narrow 
body, so that he is able to crawl right 
into the portholes of ships. 

"Oh, I would n't be a sailor for any- 
thing. I'm so glad we are not right on 
the sea-shore." 

The Goonackius Umulautus, length 
ten feet, but the most powerful of all, 
-129- 






long ears, large red eyes, pointed tail, 
razor-like teeth, claws like the points of 
scissors. Feeds on young children, has 
never been known to attack men, very 
common, can be heard most any windy 
night, has a peculiar cry, something like 
O....E....aw!~in a high tone. 

Many are the days we have gone to 
the woods to try and get a glimpse of 
the Goonack, as he comes from the 
White mountains down to the big sea, 
perhaps we might even find him asleep, 
and you know if w^e did we could kill 
him. Oh, how we have wished for some 
Theseus to come and rid the land of 
him. How we have read and read in 
books to try and find some old Theseus 
trick to play on the Goonack. And if 
we killed him we were going to try to 
sell him to the butcher, perhaps he too 
-130- 




might be good to eat, for dogs. Ugh, 
but he eats little children! Wonder if 
he eats newsboys? Ugh! 

Of course there are other animals in 
the book but these are the favorites of 
Thaddeus. When one is on the look- 
out for the Brontops and the Mososau- 
rus and the Megalosaurus and the 
Goonack, a chipping squirrel or a big 
fat woodchuck or a sneaking fox or a 
brown rabbit hardly ever scare one. 
Then too we often see a good many 
flowers and birds and we study them 
so as to find a fabled flower that pro- 
tects little boys from all wild animals. 
But the worst part of it is that we have 
not found a Goonack or his tracks, 
although we have searched and inquir- 
ed a good many times. 

The other animals are in many books 
-131- 




but the Goonack is only in ours. Often 
word comes from another little neigh- 
boring fellow that he thought he saw 
or heard a Goonack the night before, 
and of course we immediately look for 
the tracks with a view to finding him. 
But then we have had trouble in being 
sure that we followed the right track, 
for the book says nothing about them, 
and so our hunt is usually Goonackless. 
But, occasionally we find a squirrel. 
Meanwhile someone is growing larger 
and stronger and perhaps he may never 
have a fight with the Goonack, for the 
book says he rarely ever attacks men. 




A DAY IN THE LIBRARY 



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A DAY IN THE LIBRARY 

»HEN I awoke at daylight 
1 found the sky laden with 
jlead-colored clouds. The 
)\therTnometer was down to 
itwenty-foxir and a snow 
storm was setting in as if it intended 
to stay. During breakfast the flurry 
came—first a light fall, then the flakes 
increased in number and size till the 
hills and the houses down across the 
valley blended with the sky, and only a 
dark indistinct line of foliage showed 
where the pine and oak woods began. 
A little later the wind came down 
fi-om the north-west and the drifts be- 
gan to form around the side door and 
in the nooks and crannies beneath the 
trees around the house. The apple 
-135- 



trees outside the library bow windows 
had a little line of snow along their 
branches and now and then a big gust 
of wind shook the blinds, swayed the 
vines on the piazza to and fro, and scat- 
tered on the ground little clumps of 
snow from the trees. 

I went out of the room, and, after a 
little hunt down cellar and some split- 
ting with the hatchet, returned with an 
arm full of fuel for the fire. 

Packing boxes make a good quick- 
burning kindling and only a half minute 
passes before a column of fire is rushing 
up the chimney. Snap, snap, snap-snap 
goes the fire, like a whole bunch of 
firecrackers, making a great ado about 
nothing. And while the kindling is 
doing its work Helayne sits with a 
paper-basket beside her and pelts the 
-136- 







flame with a seemingly endless supply 
of wads of paper. Then we draw up 
our chairs in the hearth circle and read. 

Oftentimes a sentence is broken in 
tw^o by a little comment, or a little new 
thought we have brought to mind by 
some word we are reading, or by the 
lack of attraction, we go off on a day- 
dream over some sentence of a w^ordy 
writer, and, after thinking it all over, we 
comeback to our book, and perhaps 
read over what we have dreamed over. 

I took up a few more logs and rebuilt 
the sinking fire. The bark takes fire 
quickly and beneath it the smoke curls 
out in little spirals. Birch seems to be 
better than pine for a fire when you 
want to watch it~it burns quicker and 
so makes more changes in its size and 
shape of flame. And really it is the 
-137- 








mutability of the wood fire that makes 
it preferable to a gas log, is it not? 

I have watched one particular gas 
log at different times for ten years and 
every flame is just the same as it was 
ten years ago. Now and then a wood 
fire springs little surprises on you, a 
flame jumps out here, where you did 
not expect it, a red hot coal falls dif- 
ferent than you thought it would, a piece 
curls up like a writhing snake, another 
expands and breaks as if it warped. 

But then I dreamed some of my best 
bachelor dreams before that gas log 
and it only lost its fascination for me 
when I set up a crane and pair of and- 
irons in a fireplace of my own. And 
of those andirons and that crane more 
presently. 

It was no unusual thing for me to 

-138- 








have a roaring fire going on the hearth 
and the door and windows wide open; 
for I had a fire to look at, and, in an age 
of steam heating, that seems to be the 
place of an open fire. 

But, if you want a fireplace to make 
in you the reverence that it did to 
people when they even buried their dead 
beneath the hearth stone, there must be 
some sentiment about the fittings of it. 
You do not need to go quite so far as to 
make a graveyard of your hearth. 
Perhaps time will do that. If you have 
the fittings with some sentiment attach- 
ed to them the rest will take care of 
itself. The smoke and soot will make 
every fire-back look the same and you 
will not have to do more than sit in the 
hearth circle to have that same home- 
like feeling creep over you. 
-139- 










But notice that you must sit in the 
hearth circle. If you sit at the side of 
the hearth you will invariably look at 
the opposite side and not at the fire. 

At a vaudeville show I once saw the 
following. A man, on the eve of his 
wedding, sat smoking before a fireplace 
in the centre of the stage, —he was sup- 
posed to reverie the past and dream of 
the coming wedding. Up above the 
fireplace the scene opened and by a ser- 
ies of living pictures his thoughts were 
given to the audience. 

To me, the whole effect was spoiled 
by having him look away from the fire. 
For it is in the fire that you live some 
in the past, very little in the present and 
much in the future. 

You have a reverie or you sit in cow- 
like contentment of the present or you 
-140- 




^ 




see a castle in Spain. For the most part 
the hearth is a place of reveries and 
dreams. The lover thinks of the trysts 
of yesterday and the promise of another 
for to-morrow, the business man dreams 
of the past or future success or failure. 
And so we sit and look into the fire 
beyond the andirons. 

And this brings up my andirons and 
crane. The former are rare— not an- 
tique, not historical— not for sale on 
Boylston street or Fourth avenue. I 
have never seen any just like them—and 
that is because they were designed by 
Helayne. But I will not give you a 
description of them or recommend them 
by a drawing, if I could draw, as Ik 
Marvel did for country homes and prae- 
dial homeliness and beauty. You had 
better get your Helayne to design them 
-141- 





,/t^^ (!;*ii m-'m- cki P.^fi.ft 




and they will be "what I always eulogise. 

The crane is a so-called antique and 
like most antiques is made over and re- 
strengthened. No large broad-shoul- 
dered muscle-knotted blacksmith swung 
the hammer or pumped the bellows for 
it. A goodly fellow, barely five foot 
two, delicate of build and quite the op- 
posite of the traditional blacksmith gave 
many a push with his forearm to the 
bellows handle and brought sharp quick 
blows to bear on the red hot portions 
of the crane. 

Longfellow has given us the poem of 
the hanging of the crane, Taylor has 
given us the painting of it and no crane 
can possibly ever hope to vie with these 
in the myriad romances that one can 
find in reading one or looking at the 
other. But the crane that John the 
-142- 




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^m. 





blacksmith made over for me has a 
history, and here it is, at least as far as 
we can reasonably trace it. 

The origin of it we leave to the ob- 
scurity it courts, perhaps it goes back to 
the dark ages—perhaps. It came from 
an amalgamation of parts collected from 
Dan to Beersheba~we do not care for 
an analysis— we spend more time in just 
living and less in theoretical speculation 
of origins. We cover all its unknown 
history by one word, we say it came 
from chaos, by the grace of God. 

There was probably a time of its 
mythology, as one might call it, and 
after that, what not? The first real 
record of it was that it hung in a block- 
house fireplace in the days of war cries 
and tomahawks when the sentinel pac- 
ed his monotonous beat in the dead of 
-143- 






night and took every moving shadow of 
the trees or bushes for war-painted 
savages creeping up to massacre the 
sleeping stronghold. 

When the blockhouse passed out of 
use and peace spread its shielding wings 
over the land one of the early settlers 
took the crane to his rude home and 
there it hung for over a century. 

Probably there was a long and mer- 
ry feast at the hanging of it. Later it 
had a smouldering fire beneath it and 
the kettle hung in the hook of it whis- 
tled and spouted steam up the chimney 
while two sat alone before it and "want- 
ed no guests." 

And still later King Canutes and fine 

Princesses fi-om Fairy Isles grew up 

and went to Cathay and war and sea. 

And after many anniversaries a golden 

-144- 





wedding party made the old house raf- 
ters resound to the dancer's feet and the 
merry laugh and talk and all manner 
of pleasantry, all just as Longfellow 
pictured it in his poem. 

Son succeeded to father and son to 
son and there in the old house it hung 
for four generations of the same blood 
while little bands of the same kin gath- 
ered in a circle before it and watched 
in two new centuries. 

These were the gay youthful days of 
its life—the first realizations of the bless- 
ings of existence—the first self-confidence 
of strength-the first aspirations, the first 
disappointments and the first joys. 

Then fickle Fortune turned her face 

from it and civilization came in and 

changed the roads and lands of the 

valley and the house of the crane was 

-145- 





left in a field to rot to pieces while the 
people lived a quarter of a mile away 
in an ugly modern two-storied country 
house. 

It was one day, in late summer, that 
John made inquiries among the group 
at the village store for an old crane and 
Len Thomas spoke up and told him 
there was one in the haunted house 
near home and if he wanted it he could 
go over and dig it out of the ruins of 
the fireplace. So John went over. 

W^hen I walked into the shop the 
next day he was at work shortening it 
to fit my hearth and adding a new 
bracket to strengthen it. Thus it came 
about that in my hearth I set up a crane 
with a good many stories in it and very 
often Helayne thinks they come out of 
it, especially when we sit and "want no 
-146- 




guests," gazing far into the dying fire. 

We return to our reading. Helayne 
gives me a smell of a spotless flower 
of fields and woods culled from the fer- 
tile and blessed brain of Hamilton 
Mabie, while I in turn set up a scene 
for her of three old tattered men meet- 
ing at a cross road. They stand there 
cowering from fear, one blind, one with 
a loss of his left arm, the third with his 
right foot lopped off—examples of the 
extreme rigor against malcontents of 
William the Conqueror. And, Hume 
does not ring the curtain down until 
the last hideous act of the tragedy. 

And so we pass the day dreaming 
and reading in the hearth circle in the 
library, the room to which one comes 
when the snow drifts outside and the 
blinds are shaken by the winter wind. 




THE COUPLE IN THE WIND 



\^ 



m 





THE COUPLE IN THE WIND 
^E HAD trouble with the 
^servant problem, of course, 
|and we put an advertise- 
)\ment in the paper for one 
)week and saw the lady of 
the so-called intelligence office. 

Even though there was not any bad 
"sign" about it, Friday is a superstitious 
day in our calendar ~ Josie, a twenty 
year old, down East girl, came on Fri- 
day—and left on Saturday. Perhaps 
she was not to be blamed, for Friday 
night was a wierd one. 

Have you ever laid, tucked up to 
your cold chin, and listened to the couple 
in the wind? As is commonly believed 
the old woman talks most of the time. 
Her voice is low and probably she is 
-151- 




short and fat. Her quarreling consort 
is tall and slim and when the wind blows 
harder and harder he gets a chance to 
talk, and when he talks I tell you it is 
talking. At times they quarrel, at times 
they talk, but on a night like Friday 
they cannot talk without quarreling. 
One virtue of their quarreling is that 
they know how to do it properly —and I 
have heard of people who did not« 
Neither one interrupts the other— she is 
a lady and he a gentleman, and each 
one takes a turn at it and so it goes till 
the quarreling is done. 

After you have listened and listened 
to their rebuttal and noises commence 
to make themselves heard in the cellar 
and the kitchen and the dining room 
and the library and all over the house, 
perhaps the couple settle their dispute, 
-152- 





soothing sentence or two by 
woman, the wind dies away, and they 
go to sleep. 

But the noises about the house keep 
up. A window rattles as if it were 
being opened and I can hear the ghoul- 
ish ghost enter. First there is a creak 
of the floor near the window, then one 
nearer, right after it, and then one near- 
er, and then one at the foot of the bed 
and then one near the hall door and 
then one down stairs, after which a 
back-kitchen blind bangs, and I imagine 
he, in his devilish pranks, has jumped 
the whole flight of stairs and gone with 
a whish out of the kitchen window- 
where to, no one knows. 

Most times he comes alone, occac^'on- 
ally he brings along with him all tiie 
-153- 





old ghosts of the place. One shreiks 
and groans, another laughs and cries, 
another sings and whistles, each one 
bringing back to you under the coun- 
terpane a scene enacted under the home 
roof. All of them ghosts of the past, 
perhaps doomed to act an eternal com- 
edy or tragedy. 

One plays the part of an Indian, with 
his war whoop and the dripping scalp; 
another personates the laughing co- 
quette, the belle of the country ball, 
with her ungainly hoop-skirts, her curls 
corkscrewed, a rose in her hair, a veri- 
table fiend, forever leading on the gay 
young men, forever deceiving them. 
She gives one a glance, he takes it to 
mean he is her favorite, he follows that 
glance and soon finds other gallants led 
by it. And so the ghosts act the play. 
-154- 



Here comes another, slow and pen- 
sive, melancholy, leaning on a cane, a 
book under his arm, an old man. Deacon 
Upham. He sits down in his old 
W^indsor chair, leans his cane between 
the spindles of the side arm, places his 
large bell-shaped silk hat on the floor 
and turns the pages of the Bible. 

And still another, a short fat man, 
red-faced, sleeves rolled up, the landlord 
of the inn. He stands arms akimbo 
and chuckles at the story told by the 
man taking his ease over a posset. The 
glasses on the bar fairly shake with his 
laughter and then he takes from the 
table the tray and like a barrel rolls to 
the bar for more liquor. 

Here is a little colonia maid, golden 
curls and baby face, dressed in sombre 
homespun, in all the neatness of wax, 
-155- 




going to the Sunday service, down the 
rose-hedged lane to the gate and along 
the road to the meeting house. 

In this manner we are taken back to 
a pristine time by the ghostly Hamlets 
of the red house. 

Possibly on that Friday night the 
ghoulish fellow or the Indian or the old 
landlord may have been abroad on a 
spree. Josie's eyes were certainly bulgy 
when she appeared the next morning. 
Helayne said she had never waited on 
table before but I thought that possibly 
she may have heard some of our noisy 
ghosts, possibly the ghoulish fellow 
went up the stairs at a bound, through 
her room and out of her window. 

Perhaps she saw him, perhaps, we 
know not, anyway she found cause to 
leave us. 




SNOW TRACKS TO THE WOODS 
^ ^ ^ 






SNOW TRACKS TO THE WOODS 
FTER a day in the library, 
when the sky is clear and 
blue and the snow lies on 
the front lawn like a soft 
downy cover to keep the 

earth warm, 

"When winter soaks the fields, and female feet, 
Too weak to struggle with tenacious clay, 
Or ford the rivulets, are best at home," 

I left Helayne, writing her letters, and 
bundled up good and warm to go down 
toward the woods, looking for snow 
tracks and snow effects on the same 
walk that Helayne and I had gone in 
the warm summer. 

Around the bam I found tracks in the 

snow that told me where Roger, our 

neighbor's dog, had prowled around 

earlier than I. On the steps that take 

-159- 



one down the stone terrace I saw that 
he had jumped with two feet stuck out 
before him, a dog's way of going down 
stairs. 

I passed the elm trees at the rear of 
the bam and started across the field 
where the gaunt golden-rod skeletons 
blew all over me. After the first fall of 
snow, the field down here, looked from 
the house to be one monotonous brown, 
but, when on the way to the woods, I 
found quite a lot of snow piled deep in 
the hollows and trenches. After an- 
other storm the snow will make it a 
lovely level. 

At that time of the year there was a 
decided scarcity of colors; in the spring 
and summer and autumn, all the pal- 
ette, but, when winter is with one, only 
the cold blue of the sky with a few 
-160- 




evanescent white clouds, the soft, clean 
white of the snow and the low-keyed 
tone of the evergreens alternated with 
the browns of the oak and distant or- 
chards. Even the houses seemed to 
take on a sober and subdued tone in 
winter and the red of our house and the 
white of the neighboring ones did not 
stand out so prominent up on the high- 
er land. 

Along the southern boundary of our 
land the woods jut out into the field 
toward the red house, and, there beside 
the wiggly snake path, I came upon the 
pine trees that we had plundered of 
branches for a past wedding decoration. 
Nature had taken care of the mutila- 
tion, the sap had hardened and healed 
over the wounds. 

Then, back of the blazed oak, I entered 

-161- 





the woods and found the path that leads 
to the river side. So far no signs of any 
human being or bird or flower, and I 
hurried on. 

Near a little turn I found the fireplace 
we had built in the summer when we 
read a W^inter's Tale. Where I had sat 
and smoked while Hela5me bouqueted 
the violets, I found ice five inches thick. 
I wished Helayne might be there with 
a copy of Midsummer Night's Dream. 

Just beyond that, more dog tracks 
crossed the path at right angles and I 
cut three notches in a white birch to 
show me, in summer, the runway of the 
hunter after rabbits and partridge. 

Then, a little further on, I came on 
some crow tracks, shaped somewhat 
like a chicken's foot,— they reminded me 

of B 's wrinkles around his eyes. 

-162- 





Between each print there was a little 
line that showed where the crow's tail 
had disturbed the soft top of the snow. 
I turned off the path and followed the 
tracks. A low branch, undisturbed, 
arched over them and from the height 
of it I judged the bird was not a very 
large one. Near a mound, that to Jim 
Crow probably forboded danger, the 
tracks abruptly stopped and there I 
judged he had taken flight. 

Last summer I found a crow's skull 
and took it to my study, not gazing on 
it with a desire for morbid pleasure as 
Philip the Second is said to have done 
on a skull which had on the crown of 
Spain and grinned at him from the 
cover of his future casket. Nor, did I 
brood over it, in strains of melancholy 
Hamlet or noted Guy of Warwick and 
-163- 



sigh "alas, poor Jim." Neither did I 
have it fashioned and polished in London 
for a drinking cup, as Byron did. No, 
none of these. In fact I was quite 
affected by it as it lay in my palm. A 
slight shiver ran up and down my back 
as I looked at the empty eye-sockets. 
I compared it to the black stuffed fellow 
who stands silent on a root and gazes 
down on the rows and rows of books 
in my study. 

As I came down to the pine copse, a 
train went rumbling by, faces were 
pressed against the window panes, the 
green flags on the rear car stood out 
straight and stiff and the smoke from 
the engine flew along the snowy top 
of the cars. What a change from the 
time when the stage coach used to jolt 
along the old Concord road, stopping at 
-164- 



taverns for change of passengers and 
horses, when the bride returning from 
the honeymeon might lean from the 
window and say "hello, Will" to one of 
her former flames, when people meas- 
ured distances, not by hours, but by 
taverns with big fireplaces and good 
warming drinks. 

A little further on, I found the site of 
a deserted tramp's encampment. An 
old tin wash-boiler with a hole in it had 
served for a stove, trees and branches 
and stray fence boards had once been 
erected overhead for shelter. Probably 
the same fellows who slept in our woods 
are now fed and warmed in one of our 
Southern jails, at least I have heard that 
down that way there is a jail noted for 
its food and lodging, and these rovers 
make great efforts to be sent up to jail 
-165- 



for the winter months in that section. 
I turned from the woods toward home 
and just before leaving the beaten path 
that runs in our neighbor's woods I 
found a trace of summer, a checker- 
berry. In June the children in New 
England gather "youngsters," as the 
tender green leaves of the checkerberry 
are called, in winter the Bob White 
digs through the snow for the red ber- 
ries that are stronger in taste than the 
leaves, perhaps for medicine for some 
prodigal bird that has at last reached 
home. 




LOT, THE RUSTIC 

I 



^ 




LOT, THE RUSTIC 

?0-DAY the world seems 
^to run very much to cities. 
fThe young man "up coun- 
[ try" somewhere was easily 
^attracted to the urban uni- 
verse somewhat as Lot was. He too 
had quarreled with the herdsman of 
some Abram of his home land and he 
sought the "plain of Jordan" as a very 
well known Lot did. 

The glare of the shops and theatres 
and restaurants attracted him, the eva- 
nescent deity, Fortune, lead him on and 
only after a long chase did he discover 
her a faithless guide. In that way the 
country Lot dwelt in the city Sodom 
and tarried there many days. 

After the glare had become familiar 
-169- 




and the senses dulled to the city life, 
one day, in spring, the flowers at some 
florists or the faint harbinger scent of 
the coming summer or the pale face of 
a child hurrying with a nurse toward 
the park or some ruddy-faced country- 
looking lad hurrying for the railroad 
station, some one, or all, of these, either 
by their contrast or similarity, struck 
deep into the heart of the man and he 
longed to return to the country. And 
then came a little bad health, he felt 
"out of sorts" and he threw a few nec- 
essaries into a dress-suit case and rush- 
ed to a North Station or a Grand 
Central, just as fast as he had seen the 
country-looking lad do. 

He went back in the country to live 
and he found there a veritable Avalon. 
In a Sylvan World he set up an Undine. 




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